Biodegradable controlled delivery systems for active agents are well known in the art. Biodegradable carriers for drug delivery are useful because they obviate the need to remove the drug-depleted device.
The most common carrier materials used for controlled delivery systems are polymers. The field of biodegradable polymers has developed rapidly since the synthesis and biodegradability of polylactic acid was reported by Kulkarni et al. (1966) Arch. Surg. 93:839. Examples of other polymers which have been reported as useful as a matrix material for controlled delivery systems include polyanhydrides, polyesters such as polyglycolides and polylactide-co-glycolides, polyamino acids such as polylysine, polymers and copolymers of polyethylene oxide, acrylic terminated polyethylene oxide, polyamides, polyurethanes, polyorthoesters, polyacrylonitriles, and polyphosphazenes. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,891,225 and 4,906,474 (polyanhydrides); U.S. Pat. No. 4,767,628 (polylactide, polylactide-co-glycolide acid); U.S. Pat. No. 4,530,840 (polylactide, polyglycolide, and copolymers); and U.S. Pat. No. 5,234,520 (biodegradable polymers for controlled delivery in treating periodontal disease).
Degradable materials of biological origin are well known including, for example, crosslinked gelatin. Hyaluronic acid has been crosslinked and used as a degradable swelling polymer for biomedical applications (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,957,744 and Della Valle et al. (1991) Polym. Mater. Sci. Eng., 62:731-735).
Biodegradable hydrogels have also been developed for use in controlled delivery systems and serve as carriers of biologically active materials such as hormones, enzymes, antibiotics, antineoplastic agents, and cell suspensions. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,149,543.
Hydrogel compositions are also commonly used as substrates for cell and tissue culture, impression materials for prosthetics, wound-packing materials, or as solid phase materials in size exclusion or affinity chromatography applications. For example, nonporous, deformed and/or derivatized agarose hydrogel compositions have been used in high-performance liquid chromatography and affinity chromatography methods (Li et al. (1990) Preparative Biochem. 20:107-121), and superporous agarose hydrogel beads have been used as a support in hydrophobic interaction chromatography (Gustavsson et al. (1999) J. Chromatography 830:275-284).
Many dispersion systems are also currently in use as carriers of substances, particularly biologically active compounds. Dispersion systems used for pharmaceutical and cosmetic formulations can be categorized as either suspensions or emulsions. Suspensions are comprised of solid particles ranging in size from a few nanometers up to hundreds of microns, dispersed in a liquid medium using suspending agents. Solid particles include microspheres, microcapsules, and nanospheres. Emulsions are generally dispersions of one liquid in another stabilized by an interfacial film of emulsifiers such as surfactants and lipids. Emulsion formulations include water in oil and oil in water emulsions, multiple emulsions, microemulsions, microdroplets, and liposomes. Microdroplets are unilamellar phospholipid vesicles that consist of a spherical lipid layer with an oil phase inside, for example, those described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,622,219 and 4,725,442. Liposomes are phospholipid vesicles prepared by mixing water-insoluble polar lipids with an aqueous solution. The unfavorable entropy caused by mixing the insoluble lipid in the water produces a highly ordered assembly of concentric closed membranes of phospholipid with entrapped aqueous solution.
A number of systems for forming an implant in situ have been described. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,938,763 describes a method for forming an implant by dissolving a non-reactive, water insoluble thermoplastic polymer in a biocompatible, water-soluble solvent to form a liquid, placing the liquid within the body, and allowing the solvent to dissipate to produce a solid implant. The polymer solution can be placed in the body via syringe. The implant can assume the shape of its surrounding cavity. Alternatively, an implant can be formed from reactive, liquid oligomeric polymers which contain no solvent and which cure in place to form solids, usually with the addition of a curing catalyst.
A number of polymeric controlled delivery systems for the delivery of local anesthetics have been described in the art. Although such polymeric delivery systems may provide suitable controlled release properties for the anesthetic and further overcome disadvantages associated with injection of neat anesthetics (e.g., dispersion away from the target site, entry into blood stream, and systemic toxicities), it is difficult to overcome certain disadvantages associated with the polymeric systems, such as failure to avoid systemic initial burst release of the anesthetic or having to provide enhancer agents in order to overcome too little release of the anesthetic from the systems.